Stanford Ushers In The Age Of Bookless Libraries

There was a piece this morning on NPR about Stanford University's move away from a physical collection. This is actually old news (I covered it back in May), but it's interesting.

The periodical shelves at Stanford University’s Engineering Library are nearly bare. Library chief Helen Josephine says that in the past five years, most engineering periodicals have been moved online, making their print versions pretty obsolete — and books aren't doing much better.

This is a growing trend for libraries. Most have stopped trying to build their own collection, and instead they join consortiums and share the physical content across multiple schools. Digital content is now more heavily used than physical, so having a copy on hand isn't nearly as important as it was 20 years ago.

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Nate Hoffelder is the founder and editor of The Digital Reader:"I've been into reading ebooks since forever, but I only got my first ereader in July 2007. Everything quickly spiraled out of control from there. Before I started this blog in January 2010 I covered ebooks, ebook readers, and digital publishing for about 2 years as a part of MobileRead Forums. It's a great community, and being a member is a joy. But I thought I could make something out of how I covered the news for MobileRead, so I started this blog."